[News] Bassam Shakaa: The Making of a Palestinian ‘Organic Intellectual’

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/30/bassam-shakaa-the-making-of-a-palestinian-organic-intellectual/ 



  Bassam Shakaa: The Making of a Palestinian ‘Organic Intellectual’

by Ramzy Baroud <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/ramzy-baroud/> - 
July 30, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------

It would be unfair to claim that Palestine has not produced great 
leaders. It has, and Bassam Shakaa, the former Mayor of Nablus, who 
passed away on July 22 at the age of 89, was living proof of this.

The supposed deficit in good Palestinian leadership can be attributed to 
the fact that many great leaders have been either assassinated, languish 
in prison or are politically marginalized by Palestinian factions.

What was unique about Shakaa is that he was a true nationalist leader 
who struggled on behalf of all Palestinians without harboring any 
ideological, factionalist or religious prejudice. Shakaa was an 
inclusive Palestinian leader, with profound affinity to pan-Arabism and 
constant awareness of the global class struggle.

In a way, Shakaa exemplified the ‘organic intellectual’ as described by 
Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci. Indeed, Shakaa was not a mere “mover of 
feelings and passions” but an “active participant in practical life, as 
constructor and organizer – a permanent persuader, not just a simple 
orator”.

Shakaa’s base of support was, and remained, the people – ordinary 
Palestinians from Nablus and throughout Palestine who always stood by 
his side, most memorably when the Israeli government attempted to exile 
him in 1975; when the Palestinian Authority (PA) placed him under house 
arrest in 1999 and when he was finally laid to rest in his beloved home 
town of Nablus, a few days ago.

Between his birth in Nablus in 1930 and his death, Shakaa fought a 
relentless struggle for Palestinian rights. He challenged Israel, the 
PA, US imperialism and reactionary Arab governments. Throughout this 
arduous journey, he survived exile, prison and an assassination attempt.

But there is more to Shakaa than his intellect, eloquence, and 
morally-guided positions. The man represented the rise of a true 
democratic Palestinian leadership, one that sprang from, spoke and 
fought for the people.

It was in the mid-1970s that Shakaa rose to prominence as a Palestinian 
nationalist leader, an event that changed the face of Palestinian 
politics to this day.

Following its occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in 
June 1967, the Israeli government moved quickly to fashion a new status 
quo, where the Occupation became permanent and the Palestine Liberation 
Organization (PLO) was denied any political base in the newly-occupied 
territories.

Among other things, the Israeli government aimed at creating an 
‘alternative’ Palestinian leadership that would engage with Israel with 
trivial, non-political matters, therefore marginalizing the PLO and its 
inclusive political program.

In April 1976, the Israeli government, then led by Yitzhak Rabin, 
conducted local elections in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel had, by then, assembled another group of Palestinian ‘leaders’, 
which consisted mostly of traditional heads of clans – a small, 
self-seeking oligarchy that historically accommodated whatever foreign 
power happened to be ruling over Palestinians.

Israel was almost certain that its hand-picked allies were ready to 
sweep the local elections. But the Occupation had its unintended 
consequences, which surprised the Israelis themselves. For the first 
time since Israel’s creation, all of historic Palestine was now under 
Israeli control. This also meant that the Palestinian people were, once 
again, part of the same demographic unit, which allowed for coordinated 
political mobilization and popular resistance.

These efforts were largely facilitated by the Palestinian National Front 
(PNF) which was founded in 1973 and comprised all Palestinian groups 
throughout Occupied Palestine. What irked Israel most is that the PNF 
had developed a political line that was largely parallel to that of the PLO.

To Israel’s dismay, the PNF decided to take part in the local elections, 
hoping that its victory could defeat the Israeli stratagem entirely. To 
thwart the PNF’s initiative, the Israeli army carried out a massive 
campaign of arrests and deportation of the group’s members, which 
included intellectuals, academics and local leaders.

But all had failed as Palestine’s new leaders won decisive victories, 
claiming most mayoral offices and bravely articulating an 
anti-occupation, pro-PLO agenda.

“We are for the PLO, and we say this in our electoral speeches,” the 
elected Mayor of Ramallah, Karim Khalaf, said at the time. “The people 
who come along to our meetings do not ask about road improvements and 
new factories; we want an end to the Occupation.”

Bassam Shakaa was at the forefront of that nascent movement, whose 
ideals and slogans spread out to all Palestinian communities, including 
those inside Israel.

Despite decades of exile, fragmentation and Occupation, the Palestinian 
national identity was now at its zenith, an outcome the Israeli 
government could never have anticipated.

In October 1978, Shakaa, Khalaf and the other empowered mayors were 
joined by city councilors and leaders of various nationalist 
institutions to form the National Leadership Committee, the main 
objective of which was to challenge the disastrous Camp David agreement 
and the resulting marginalization of the Palestinian people and their 
leadership.

On July 2, 1980, a bomb planted by a Jewish terrorist group, blew up 
Shakaa’s car, costing him both of his legs. Another targeted Khalaf, who 
had one of his legs amputated. The leaders emerged even stronger 
following the assassination attempts.

“They ripped off both my legs, but this only means that I am closer to 
my land,” said Shakaa from his hospital bed. “I have my heart, my 
intellect and a just aim to fight for, I don’t need my legs.”

In November 1981, the Israeli government dismissed the nationalist 
mayors, including Shakaa. But that was not the end of his struggle 
which, following the formation of the PA in Ramallah in 1994, acquired a 
new impetus.

Shakaa challenged the PA’s corruption and subservience to Israel. His 
frustration with the PA led him to help draft and to sign, in 1999, a 
“Cry from the Homeland”, which denounced the PA for its “systematic 
methodology of corruption, humiliation and abuse against the people.” As 
a result, the PA placed Shakaa, then 70, under house arrest.

However, it was that very movement created by Shakaa, Khalaf and their 
peers that sowed the seeds for the popular Palestinian uprising in 1987. 
In fact, the ‘First Intifada’ remains the most powerful popular movement 
in modern Palestinian history.

May Shakaa rest in peace and power, now that he has fulfilled his 
historic mission as one of Palestine’s most beloved leaders and true 
organic intellectuals of all times.

/*Ramzy Baroud* is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine 
Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto 
Press, London, 2018). He earned a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the 
University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for 
Global and International Studies, UCSB./

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20190730/10f4568a/attachment.htm>